for people who care about the West

Beloved companion or Parisian dinner?

There are right ways -- and there are wrong ways --
to dispose of an unwanted horse, according to Brent Glover, who for
33 years has operated Orphan Acres, a 50-acre equine sanctuary in
northwestern Idaho.

Here are some of the wrong ways,
based on recently reported incidents: Don’t tie the horse to
a stockyard fence or a downtown stop sign and then drive off. Don't
turn the horse loose on public land or in a Costco parking lot.
Don’t bury or incinerate a dead horse near a water drainage.
When a horse is euthanized, its carcass may be classed as "medical
waste," ineligible for landfill burial or even cremation in many
states.

As for the right ways, one method is to let the
horse die a natural death, dig a grave and backfill it with manure
or compost -- under optimal conditions, the half-ton corpse will
decompose in 60 to 90 days.

Another option -- shipping an
unwanted animal to a domestic slaughterhouse – is no longer
available.

Spurred by an anti-slaughter campaign led by
the Humane Society of the United States, the last U.S. slaughter
plants -- two in Texas and one in Illinois – were closed by
state laws two years ago. The abattoirs processed horsemeat for
zoos and for human consumption in China, Italy and elsewhere,
accounting for the death (and disposal) of about 100,000 unwanted
horses annually.

Now that the domestic slaughterhouses
have been shuttered, many horse lovers argue that the situation for
horses has actually worsened. Of the approximately 9.2 million
horses in the U.S., some 2.3 million of them are in the West,
mainly used in recreation and agriculture. Squeezed by rising
prices, and lacking a way to dispose of their animals, owners are
more frequently abandoning, neglecting and surrendering their
horses.

Room and board for a horse is around $200 per
month now -- and the cost of fuel, hay and grain, and basic care is
climbing. At the same time, because of a surplus of unwanted
horses, auction prices have plunged, down to $100 or less from an
earlier average of $300 to $500. If you figure in the cost of
euthanasia and disposal at $750, it’s a swing of about $1,200
for the owner looking to get rid of an unwanted equine.

Glover says the number of unwanted horses is “snowballing. If
I said yes to all the queries, we would have 500 horses
here.” He says his hay bill has nearly tripled this year, due
to rising agriculture and transportation costs.

Jim
Warren, owner of 101 Livestock in Aromas, Calif., near Monterey,
says he’s picked up some 70 abandoned horses in the past two
years. “A lot are in really poor condition,” he says.
“People can’t afford to keep them, can’t afford
to kill them, so they simply stop feeding them.”

Horses accounted for about 1,500 of Colorado’s 10,000
investigations into animal cruelty and neglect this year, up nearly
30 percent from the year before. Most of the incidents involved
malnourishment, says Scot Dutcher, chief of the state’s
Bureau of Animal Protection.

Like many, Dutcher is
conflicted on the slaughter issue. “No one prefers
slaughter,” he says. “But frankly, it’s a
necessary evil.”

According to the American
Veterinary Medical Association, “humane” slaughter in
the United States begins with a captive bolt gun, which renders the
horse unconscious before its throat is slit. Many people are
appalled by the thought that terrified horses see other horses
being killed. But the morality of slaughter is “not a
black-and-white debate,” says Chris Whitney, president of the
Colorado Unwanted Horse Alliance. “Many of us look at horses
as livestock. Others see the horse as a large dog. It’s tough
to meld the approaches and points of view.”

Proposed legislation would ban horse slaughter in this country,
along with the export of horses to other countries to be
slaughtered. But the complexity of the issue has kept the bill from
making it through Congress, despite support from a long list of
lawmakers including Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama.

Members of the Livestock Marketing Association testified before
Congress in May, says president Jim Santomaso, telling lawmakers
that “horse owners want and need a legitimate, practical and
humane way to dispose of their horses that have come to the end of
their useful life, but still have value as a slaughter
animal.” The proposed legislation “is a slippery
slope,” says John McBride, a spokesman for the 61-year-old
trade association, “saying that a legitimate food product can
be banned.”

Slaughter opponents deny that horsemeat
can ever be considered “legitimate.”

“Horses have never been raised as a food animal in this
country,” says Stacy Segal, equine protection specialist for
the Humane Society of the United States. “We give them
medications that would never be allowed for a slaughter animal.
None of the mechanisms to protect meat for human consumption are in
place.” The group’s primary argument against slaughter,
however, is that horses “are companions who serve us in a
variety of ways.”

The closure of the U.S.
slaughterhouses has coincided with a sharp jump in the number of
horses being shipped to neighboring countries. There’s no way
to confirm that exported horses are being slaughtered, says John
Rice of the USDA’s Foreign Agriculture Service. But the
export rate has tripled in the past three years, with nearly 46,000
horses transported to Canada and 45,000 to Mexico in 2007, many
under inhumane conditions. And foreign slaughter techniques are
questionable – a film on the Humane Society Web site shows
slaughterhouse workers in Mexico stabbing a horse repeatedly in the
spinal cord.

The slaughterhouse closures have also had
significant financial impacts, according to the Animal Welfare
Council in Colorado Springs, Colo., including loss of revenue ($26
million annually for the export of horsemeat) and the cost of
maintaining unwanted horses (based on 2005 statistics, the Council
estimated $220 million per year nationwide).

Anyway you
look at it, a horse is a “1,200-pound fixture for 25-30
years,” says Chris Whitney. “It’s a sizable
investment, both economically and emotionally. I think people in
the West in particular – for whom horses are tools,
livestock, part of agriculture – don’t see slaughter as
a problem.” He says the core issue “starts with how
many babies hit the ground. That’s the long-term fix –
for people to be responsible in their breeding programs.”

But horses are suffering now, and rescue operations are
coming up short. “These people who are pushing this
no-slaughter should be sending at least $5 a month to help care for
these animals,” says Glover. “They all want to keep the
horses alive, but who’s going to pay?”